When we study teachers’ retention and professional development, we often focus on one attribute or behaviour, such as self-efficacy (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001), autonomy (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020) or job satisfaction (Toropova et al., 2021). These, and other similar measures, tells us something useful about teachers’ professional lives, offering insights into how likely it is that teachers stay in the profession or what we can do to better support them. For example, self-efficacy helps us understand how teachers feel about their teaching, including their ability to manage the classroom, use assessment effectively or motivate pupils.
But teachers’ lives and their professional identities are complex. These characteristics interact with each other (Canrinus et al., 2012; Yoon & Kim, 2022). Therefore, in our studies of teacher retention and professional development, we are exploring a new conceptualisation: teacher professional engagement which brings these characteristics together.
Our initial theorisation of professional engagement includes factors such as:
- participating in ongoing professional development
- sharing practice with and supporting colleagues
- career orientations and ambitions
- commitment to the profession
- personal and professional values
We already know that these factors are likely to influence teachers’ feelings about their roles: their self-efficacy and their job satisfaction. Bringing them together enables us to look at teachers’ experiences as a whole, considering how different aspects of their professional lives interact and how they influence their overall engagement in teaching as a profession.
In this conceptualisation, professional engagement is not static: it will change over time, as teachers gain experience and develop in their careers. Professional engagement will be different for teachers of different subjects, phases, genders and ages. Importantly, professional engagement will also be influenced by the school environment in which teachers work and by the choices made by school leaders and policy makers.
Our initial reviews of the literature suggest that teachers whose professional engagement is aligned with that of their school may be more likely to have greater reserves of resilience, self-management and persistence and ultimately to stay in the profession (Ovenden-Hope et al., 2020; De Clercq et al., 2022). The opposite might therefore be true: where teachers’ professional engagement is not aligned with that of their schools, they may feel more conflicted and challenged in their roles, and therefore less likely to remain in the profession.
Therefore, if we can understand more about teachers’ professional engagement, we might be better able to identify the policies and practices which increase it and thereby support more teachers to stay in the profession.
References
Canrinus, E.T., Helms-Lorenz, M., Beijaard, D. et al. (2012). Self-efficacy, job satisfaction, motivation and commitment: exploring the relationships between indicators of teachers’ professional identity. European Journal of Psychology of Education. 27, 115–132.
De Clercq, M., Watt, H. M., & Richardson, P. W. (2022). Profiles of teachers’ striving and wellbeing: Evolution and relations with context factors, retention, and professional engagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 637.
Ovenden-Hope, T., Blandford, S., Cain, T., and Maxwell, B. (2020). RETAIN: A research-informed model of continuing professional development for early career teacher retention. In Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention (pp. 59-72). Routledge.
Toropova, A., Myrberg, E,. & Johansson, S. (2021) Teacher job satisfaction: the importance of school working conditions and teacher characteristics. Educational Review, 73:1, 71-97, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2019.1705247.
Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and teacher education, 17(7), 783-805.
Worth, J. & Van den Brande, J. (2020). Teacher autonomy: how does it relate to job satisfaction and retention? Slough: NFER.
Yoon, I. & Kim, M. (2022). Dynamic patterns of teachers’ professional development participation and their relations with socio-demographic characteristics, teacher self-efficacy, and job satisfaction, Teaching and Teacher Education, 109 (2022) 103565, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103565.